This work was inspired by a character in English author Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s popular 1834 novel, The Last Days of Pompeii. Rogers depicted Nydia in a moment of overt power—escaping from the erupting Mount Vesuvius and searching for her lost loved ones. As a symbol of feminine sacrifice and bravery, the sculpture greatly appealed to a Victorian public. Nydia became Rogers’s best-known work and the most popular American full-length statue of its time. The sculptor’s journal recorded fifty-two orders for the work between 1867 and 1888.